


Together

by bigsunglasses



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gladiators, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Arena, Community: hc_bingo, Gladiators, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Protectiveness, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 11:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigsunglasses/pseuds/bigsunglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The arena is not a good place to be. The only way to survive it is together.</p><p>A Roman-ish AU. Eliot, Parker and Hardison fighting as gladiators.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

**I.**

_This is your choice, Barbarian,_ the arena's owner had said. _Walk out there and be killed. Or walk out there and kill._

The sun is heavy as a hammer, battering sweat from Eliot's body. He feels like a roasting pig in his cuirass and tunic, the handle of his sword sticky, slippy. They've given him his own weapons and armour, for the pleasure of the crowd, but he doesn't quite know if it's him inside them. 

Because this is his choice: die, and then be sure it's Eliot, and be sure that the honour of death will expunge the dishonour of capitivity from his soul, and the gods will claim him still. Or live, by raising his sword against the countryman who's been set to fight him, and have the gods turn their backs forever.

The roar of the crowd drowns the thunder of his heart.

The grilled gate opposite him in the arena's wall opens. Someone's pushed through. Eliot squints against the sun, noting the style of armour and weaponry. The designs are agonisingly familiar, and gods above and below but the thought of succumbing to his people's conquerors and fighting his own kind is sickening.

The other man staggers, listing to one side like a sinking boat. Eliot heads for him instinctively. The crowd screams approval. He can't see them, they're above the sand, safe in their seats. In his head they're irrelevant, a useless, brainless mob. What do they know of what's truly happening here? 

He has not been given his sheath, so he drops his sword, grabbing the man and propping him up. An older fellow, greying black hair, face blotchy and glistening … 

“I've got you,” Eliot says, lowering him gently to the ground. “You're all right, now.”

“Don't be a fool,” breathes the man, in the language Eliot thought he'd never hear again. “I'm dying.”

The crowd's noise is turning nasty, disappointed. 

“No. I'm not going to fight you.” Fury lances through Eliot, like a gift from the gods. “I should have died in battle, not survived to be here. I won't play their games - “

“I was caught a month ago, boy, and given a wound in my gut. It's not the kind of thing a man heals from.”

And now Eliot knows ... He can smell it beneath the sweat. Sickly. Meaty. 

“They gave you an easy kill, first time round.” The man grins, teeth yellow and ghastly against his pallid skin. “You're a big, handsome lad: you'll do well, here … might earn your freedom … “

“No. No, I won't.” _This_ is to be the stage for the rest of his life, this playing board of life and death, under thousands of critical, hungry eyes? 

There's a roar. Not from the crowd, this time – and they're sounding happy again. But whatever the dying man sees over Eliot's shoulder makes his eyes widen in horror, and Eliot barely has a chance to grab his sword and turn before the lion is upon them. It's emaciated and covered in flies, and Eliot pities it for one moment before it tries to gut him with a swish of claws, and then he fights. But staying out of the lion's reach means he can't get in any blows with his sword. They dance across the sand, prisoner and prisoner, slashing, jumping, stumbling. The focus of combat briefly wipes his mind clean of hopelessness and despair. It feels good.

But then the lion spies the easier prey, the man on the ground. Turning, it leaps - 

With a spasm of horror Eliot leaps, too, discarding his sword once more. He straddles the lion, arms wrapping around its scrawny neck, and heaves -

When it's dead, he crawls to his countryman.

“My turn, now,” the dying figure whispers. “Give me a clean death. Then live. And hope.” One weak hand grips his hair. Their gazes lock. 

“No.” Eliot is hardly able to breathe the word. He feels the tears on his cheeks. “Don't ask me this … “

“I beg you. Send me to the gods. Give me the only escape left to me.”

*

Later, he remembers only the yells of the owner. _Poor show, Barbarian. No fight. You killed him, but without a fight it's nothing. You're a waste of space, a waste of food –_ Followed by a whipping, meant as punishment for one thing, but which he takes as punishment for another.

The next man they put him up against is not one of his kind. Killing is easy and brings a few hours of peace, as if all the agony in his soul flows down the blade and erupts in a scarlet fountain.

After that, everything's easy and he's popular. It is not Eliot on the sands, fighting: it is someone else, who doesn't care, it is someone else, someone else, someone else … 

It is, it is, it is.

**II.**

When the girl arrives, it's meant to be a joke. The arena's owner doesn't approve of female gladiators, thinks they lower the tone, but there's no denying that they draw crowds. So he gets himself a pretty blonde one at the slave market, an exotic type, fresh from a newly-conquered people in a colder land. After all, when the crowds get bored of her, she can be put to other uses.

She's given to Barbarian for some quick training; _one barbarian for another,_ laughs the owner, and leaves her to him. She's built like a willow tree, full of flex and none of the pigheadedness needed for the arena: they don't share any words in any language. He had learned the tongue of their captors during the long months of war: she's from a country that surrendered without even fighting. 

He wraps her fingers around the hilt of a sword, trying silently to communicate an effective grip, then strides away, leaving her bewildered, the weight of the sword dragging her arm down. She's not right for this place, he thinks. She'll be dead, like the others, soon enough.

She isn't.

Following her first match, he sees her sitting on a rafter in the training hall. No one's noticed her, like she's just another one of the little white birds that fly in and out of the high windows. 

Her hands are still dripping blood.

When he asks, they tell him that she ripped off her opponent's balls with her nails and teeth, stuffed them down his throat, then held his lips and nostrils shut until he died.

He wishes he hadn't asked, because it makes him feel a stirring of pride. He looks up at the rafters, and meets her eyes, and nods.

Later that day the owner makes him do another training session with her – _teach her some proper fighting, she alarmed the crowd and that isn't easy._ Barbarian, thinking of teeth and fingernails, gives her knives. These get a fascinated reaction: her quick fingers turning them over and over, slicing sharply at the air. Followed by an evil grin. Around and around she begins to spin, arms outstretched and tipped with inches of lethal blade. As if creating a bubble where no one can touch her.

When she stops, she looks at him seriously. “Parker,” she says, tapping her chest with the tip of one knife. “Parker.”

It can only be her name.

After a pained moment, he inclines his head in acceptance. Truth is a gift, here. There is nothing he can give in return, but a gift must be acknowledged. He points her towards a target, and mimes throwing, before leaving her. There is something in his throat. An unsteadiness in his limbs. 

The next day he faces her in the arena. The owner is very unhappy. His secondary plan to sell Parker's body has been destroyed. Her first outing in the arena was upsetting enough, but the previous evening he'd tried to rape her and it was only the hasty intervention of his bodyguard that prevented her doing the same to him as to her first opponent. The rumours are going wild: no man would dare her, now.

 _Kill the bitch, Barbarian,_ says the owner as he shoves the two of them, blinking, into the sun and the scream of the crowd. _I'm a businessman; I know a lost investment when I see one._ He slams the grilled door behind them.

Barbarian, in the cuirass and sword that mean nothing to him now, looks at Parker with the knives that mean everything to her.

“Kill me,” he says.

She doesn't understand, of course. Just looks at him with wide eyes, and then turns and throws one knife neatly through the grille directly into the owner's eye.

*

Gladiators can't be tried for deaths committed in the arena, and since the late owner's son is glad to inherit the business unexpectedly early, he doesn't argue the point about whether or not his father had actually been properly in the arena at the moment of death. And an exotic murderess, advertised correctly, will be a draw. Nevertheless, there must be punishment. 

Barbarian takes the whipping for her. He gave her the knives, after all, he tells the new owner. He showed her how to throw.

And afterwards, when he's facedown on his pallet trying to obscure the pain with alcohol, Parker comes to him. She lies down next to him – her, and her knives. She strokes his face and says things he doesn't understand, and after a while her words blot out reality and he dreams of a land of moss and mist where he has another name.

When he wakes, she's still there.

**III.**

The owner puts them on as a team, after that. _Barbarian and the Barbarian's Ball-Eating Bride,_ say the posters. _The Brute and His Bride,_ for the smaller leaflets. Top billing. Wild savages from the frontier.

Parker doesn't accept her new nickname at first, despite not knowing what it means. “Parker!” she yells, over and over, only changing her tune when the owner gets out the whips and heads for Barbarian. It takes three men to subdue Parker, and three days for Barbarian to heal enough to perform again. And the owner's pleased: he's found the key to controlling the pair of them. 

He sees them as each other's weak links.

They see themselves as each other's shield.

The crowd loves them. There are gifts from admirers in the world beyond the arena that Barbarian and Parker can never know – wine, silk sandals, perfume. Most of these are skimmed away by the owner, of course, but sometimes treats reach them. And when they do, they get burned and destroyed, as hated poison. There are offers, too, from ladies and gentlemen seeking a thrill of danger: _give us the softer aspects and movements of your body,_ these offers say, in coy tones, _and we'll give you even more gifts._

It's the one point the owner doesn't push. He remembers Parker's first outing in the arena. He doesn't want either of them anywhere near clients.

And at day's end, on their shared pallet in the dark dormitory beneath the arena floor, they figure out a shared language together. Barbarian never presses for her history, for he could share nothing himself: whatever he was before the arena is gone, as lifeless and lost as the bodies of the men and animals they slay. In the daylight, he hides everything that makes him soft and imagines himself one with the rock of the arena walls, but in the night he lets himself stroke her hair and touch her lips and think of quieter things. Together they whisper about weapons and enemies and the taste of their favourite foods, and breathe formless dreams against each other's skin, and it is enough. It is enough.

**IV.**

_Since you did so well with your last new barbarian, have another,_ says the owner one day.

The new one is tall and gangling, black where Parker is white, soft where Barbarian is hard. Another conquered people. He cries for the first hour in the training hall, while Parker stares and Barbarian feels uneasy. His hands and feet are soft: the owner says he was two weeks on a slave galley on his way here, but he still looks gentle around the edges. 

“I'm Hardison,” he says, after Parker gives him a scrap of cloth to wipe his tears. Not out of sympathy, but out of practicality: they're meant to be teaching him, not coddling him. “That's my name. Hardison.” His accent speaking the conqueror's tongue is terrible, but he's fluent all the same.

“Parker.”

“Barbarian.”

“How long have you been here?” He's twisting the cloth in his hands frantically. Barbarian wonders if he should train the man to be a wrestler, a strangler.

Neither reply. What a pointless question. As if time has meaning, here.

“Are you near earning your way out, yet?”

Almost Barbarian laughs, but it would hurt too much. He shakes his head, instead. “There is no earning out,” he says. “The owner makes sure that your costs always outweigh your earnings.”

“That's not legal!”

Bored with conversation, Parker gives him a mace.

“What is this?”

Parker mimes braining somebody, with graphic splashing gestures to imitate the aftermath. Hardison bends over and is sick on the sand of the training hall floor.

That afternoon the owner tries a new line-up. _The Original Barbarian, his Bride, and the Barbarian Prince!_ proclaim the leaflets. Hardison doesn't protest the nickname, just seems surprised that the owner knew the truth. His history is an open book. He has no secrets.

Parker kills a lion, and Barbarian kills two tigers, and Hardison doesn't kill a wolf: they have to do it for him, while he hides his eyes and sings a song to drown out the racket. “It was on the same boat as me,” he babbles, “I just couldn't,” as they drag him out of the arena, and Parker keeps up a furious monologue in her native tongue.

The owner's used to whipping Barbarian now. He doesn't touch Hardison, mostly because he's planning on selling him along as a sex slave since he's clearly unsuited for the arena. So Barbarian takes the blame, and Parker dresses his wounds, and in the middle of the night Hardison comes to them, shaking. “I'm sorry,” he says, “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Is this hell? This is hell, isn't it. This is hell.” They don't reply, but neither do they send him away: he ends up sleeping on the stone floor beside their pallet.

The next day it becomes even clearer just how soft Hardison is. He doesn't know how to fight for his place in the breakfast queue, or get a seat at a table, or stop the oldest gladiators roughing him up. It's like seeing a kitten lost in the lion pens. Barbarian tries to ignore it, but Parker suddenly snaps, and fetches Hardison to sit with them.

“Do you think if I spoke to the owner he'd agree to better financial practices?” he jabbers, clutching his breakfast bowl like a lifeline. “Gladiators earning out – means more turnover – constant new attractions – draw better crowds – good business sense, right? Right - ”

*

After his conversation with the owner in his office, Parker presses cool wet clothes to the bruises on Hardison's face. She drags his pallet over to theirs, and makes him lie down, and then says to Barbarian, “He's ours.”

“Why?”

“So we can be sure he never becomes us.”

“Parker,” says Hardison, hazy with pain. “Eliot.”

Barbarian freezes. “Where did you hear that name?” he says hoarsely.

“On the papers … in the office.”

It's like someone's struck a match on his soul. He breathes in, breathes out. _Eliot_. Parker looks at him queryingly. The weight of her gaze is blessing and agony at once. _Eliot_. This one word is a net dragging the rest of his past with it, and it hurts, hurts, hurts but he can't escape it because the net is tied to his soul. 

He had thought his soul lost.

“Eliot,” whispers Hardison. “Nice name.”

Barbarian wouldn't protect this soft, useless kitten.

Eliot would.

After an endless moment of pain, the barbarian Eliot takes Parker's hand, then Hardison's too. “Yes, Parker. He's ours,” he breathes.

**V.**

They're still popular, with their exotic captive appearance, but not as popular as before: the crowd doesn't understand why they protect their third wheel, why they do his kills and take his blows and guard his back. Why, when they slip and something gets through and he's hurt, the two pale barbarians go into a frenzy.

Eliot takes whipping after whipping for it from the owner. Parker teaches Hardison to help dress the wounds, and in return he teaches her words in his language and the captors' language. Now it's the three of them building a polyglot way of communication, verbs and nouns and gestures all strung together with trust and stubbornness and comfort. After the whippings Hardison tells them weird or improbable stories from his land, and after the arena Eliot murmurs the poetry of his people, and Parker listens and listens like she's just found an oasis.

The sale of Hardison as a sex slave is averted a few weeks after his arrival when he announces to potential buyers that he has very weak bowels. Eliot is still laughing the next day, when they go into the arena. Though the laughter's quickly wiped away when he gets a hip wound from a criminal sentenced to die in the arena. That's the first time Hardison gets a wound, when he dives to Eliot's defence, smacking the criminal and yelling until Parker can get in a death blow.

They sew up the hip wound, after, and the long scrape on Hardison's arm. He asks, “Won't you get tired of doing this for me?”. Parker rearranges things so he lies between her and Eliot to sleep.

He protests a little, because his nightmares make him kick and struggle, unlike his two bedmates who are motionless in their sleep. But after that first morning waking in a sweaty, secure huddle, he doesn't question any more, and finds his place in the team, by setting himself in charge of the gifts they receive. Not so many now, but still plentiful. “Why did you _burn_ them all before?” Hardison demands in horror. “Can't you see beyond your playing board?” He barters the wine to the cook for bigger portions of food to keep up Eliot's bulk; forces Parker to wear the sandals so her feet don't blister against the hot sand; and throws the bottles of perfume up to pretty girls sitting near the front of the arena. In return, those girls drop flowers and sweeties and coins.

The coins are rare enough that the owner doesn't notice them, and can be kept. Stored. 

Accumulated.

Little tokens of hope, tickets to the future. On the worst days, when they all – even Hardison – emerge from the arena wounded and staggering, they count their hoard silently, over and over, and then go out again the next day and smile to the crowd as wide as they can while washing the world with blood.

**VI.**

They plan for their freedom carefully, on a day when an imperial representative is at the arena, and it's extra crowded. The coins are sewed into a series of thin belts around their waists. Today they'll be fighting six of the regular, local gladiators. Easy kills, Eliot thinks, because he's watched them train. Parker doesn't care whether it's easy or hard, she just does it. Hardison, as always, makes the third point of the triangle – standing well back.

When six bodies lie on the ground, and Eliot is limping from a strike he failed to block, Hardison steps forward, inverting the triangle. He holds up his arms, shouting for attention. Surprised, the crowd quiets. “It's our hundreth fight!” he yells. It isn't, it's their eighty-seventh, but round numbers get the crowd's approval. They like long-lasting fighters.

“And we're happy to say we've all earned enough to buy our freedom!”

Mixed reaction to that. Eliot listens carefully, as attuned to the noise of the crowd as a parent to a baby's wails. He never lets his sword go.

The owner rushes onto the arena, with a fixed grin. _What are you doing_ , he hisses, _you have no money -_

They produce their money. “Gifts, legally earned!” Hardison shouts. “From our beloved audience!” He smiles and hams at the crowd. Parker, caressing her knives, circles lazily to stand behind the owner. Who is counting the coins, in shock.

“We call on the most respected imperial representative to recognise this freedom, as we go forth to begin our lives as _loyal citizens_ of this land - “

Parker snorts. 

_This can't be possible,_ the owner is whispering dazedly, _can't be, one gladiator's never won free before, never mind three …_

And Eliot hears the future in the crowd's roar. They have decided to like the novelty of it. Barbarians, too! And what the crowd likes, the owner can't gainsay. He grins, sickly, clutching the coins tightly, muttering something about manumission papers.

“We're looking forward to meeting our fans in the street outside!” yells Hardison. And Eliot sees the owner's last hope – of locking them all down until they are forgotten – draining away

“Hardison,” he says. “You've done it.”

“Knew it would work,” says the other man, beaming with astonishment. “Knew it would work!”

Parker grabs their hands. “We did it together,” she says, and her tone says she's smug and her face says she doesn't know what to feel. 

* 

On the street Eliot has to stop Parker killing the people crowding them. He hasn't been outside the arena in years, and neither has she, so now it's Hardison shepherding them, Hardison who's only been inside a few months. Their fans press more coins on them, more gifts, and he keeps them: “If we hurry, we can get an evening passage out from the docks,” he breathes.

As the sun sets in bloody glory, they buy last-minute cheap tickets on a ship going somewhere – anywhere – away. The captain looks at their wounds and scars and weapons and says they can have a private cabin, and a sailor will deliver their meals, and could they please keep away from the other passengers.

In the cabin they eat, glad of the isolation, tender and shaking from shock.

“How can we ever repay you for our freedoms?” says Eliot, trying to find something solid to stand on in his soul, and Hardison throws a bowl of lentils at him, and Parker says they're both being foolish and wasting food.

“You gave _me_ everything,” chokes Hardison, “don't you think I know which scars should really belong to me - ?”

“You gave me back myself.” Eliot wants to fight the point. He's so used to fighting and protecting, not the other way around. “I lost sight of freedom, thought life was enough, until you showed us the way off the playing board - “

“Repayment,” Hardison says hollowly, shoulders sagging. “So is that all you saw me as, someone giving you a service?”

And that's not what Eliot meant, and he feels sick with horror at the thought. “No. No - “ 

“Quiet, both,” says Parker, and for the very first time there are tears on her face. “We all found each other. All saved each other. We're each other's _gifts_ , not debts.”

And here is the world inverted: Eliot gave death as a gift, that first outing in the arena, and now he has given and won and received life. He inhales, and then for the first time in forever he begins to weep.

Four arms wrap around him, and he grips them back.

There is no need for words.

*

The future is so big they hardly dare look at it head-on. They have three homelands between them, and no allies. They have more scars than resources, more nightmares than dreams. Crossing a thousand oceans may not wash their spirits clean of survivor's guilt and rage and fear. 

But that night they sleep on a hammock and listen to the sigh of waves, not the roar of crowds. They're all piled tight together. There's no one pawing at their things or kicking them awake. 

It's an ending and it's a beginning at once. 

Maybe it's even happiness.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt "arena" on my hc_bingo card (http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com).
> 
> Thanks to somebraveapollo for suggestions/advice/support!


End file.
